Maximum Sadness: Crysis multiplayer is facing the axe

“Will it run Crysis?” was an oft-expressed anxiety of mid-noughties PC gaming, but here in the chaotic end-times of 2018 we’re faced with a new one: “Crysis can’t run Crysis.”

Come October, there’ll be no more multiplayer nanosuit shenanigans: Crytek are shutting the online component of Crysis down, apparently because the playerbase is just too dang small to make life support worthwhile. Singleplayer isn’t going anywhere, you’ll be glad to hear, but still: it’s sad when something dies.
Admittedly I didn’t play Crysis multiplayer all that much, but I have fond memories of leaping over tanks and shoulder-charging my way through island towns in pursuit of Old Man Rossignol, back in the salad days of this here newly-rejiggered website.

The triumph here is how long the service did stay alive for – 11 years in total, which is a whopping 8 more years than its sequel Crysis 2 managed (its multiplayer was put to sleep in 2014, a casualty of the GameSpy shutdown).

And it’s doubly good-going, given that Crysis the first’s multiplayer was pretty much broken at launch.

But all good things on the internet must end, and so it that “Online multiplayer will no longer be available from October 11, 2018”, according to this here official Facebook post. “We don’t have the required number of players to keep up the service and ensure all our players have a great online experience.”

It’s sad enough to lose any multiplayer game that once had a community, but it’s hard not to also interpret this as another nail in the coffin for a once-mighty shooter series that has lain dormant for the past half-decade.

Of course, Crysis has been the modder’s friend for 11 years too, so it’s surely not impossible that those who care most can find away to Nano With Friends again.